Leslie Helm, the editor of Seattle Business Magazine, discussed 140 years of his family's business in Japan, as detailed in his new book Yokohama Yankee.
In Yokohama Yankee Leslie Helm embarks on a personal journey beginning with his great-grandfather, who launched a stevedoring and forwarding company in Yokohama that would last for more than a century through two world wars and many natural disasters. Helm will discuss aspects of his book that touch on the challenges the family business faced including due to family owners on opposite sides of world wars, lack of close connection to the local community, government regulations that discriminated against foreign companies and the difficulty in imparting family business values to succeeding generations.
Helm is a veteran reporter and editor with more than 20 years experience working for local and national publications. Helm began his career with Business Week, reporting for the magazine first as Tokyo correspondent and later as Boston bureau chief. He returned to Tokyo to cover Japan and Korea as correspondent for The Los Angeles Times before moving to Seattle for the Times to cover business in the Northwest. Helm earned a master of science from the Columbia University School of Journalism. He also has a bachelor’s degree in political science and a master of arts in Asian studies from the University of California, Berkeley. Helm was born and raised in Japan and speaks fluent French and Japanese.